Kiehnes Frosty Pepto: The Horse That Lets Junior Heel Like Junior
Nogueira’s Kiehnes Frosty Pepto lets him do whatever he needs to do to win.

Back East, Kenny Brown has dominated the heeling scene for years. He’s won the First Frontier Circuit and every major rodeo on the coast along the way. He and his wife, Mary Ann (who’s made the First Frontier Circuit Finals herself in the heading), own and operate Lightning B Rope Horses in Keedysville, Maryland, and that’s where Junior Nogueira found Timon—the coming 12-year-old buckskin gelding registered as Kiehne’s Frosty Pepto.

Aboard Timon, Nogueira can do what Nogueira does best: heel two feet, no matter the circumstances.

“He’s been pretty good since I cracked him out,” Nogueira said. “He has just gotten so solid. The more you use him, the better he gets.”

Junior Nogueira and Kiehnes Frosty Pepto at the 2021 NFR. Jamie Arviso Photos

God’s Time: Driggers and Nogueira Are Long-Due World Champs

New Mexico-Bred

Timon ought to be great—he’s ranch-raised, by New Mexico’s Kiehne family out of their great stud Pepto Bluelena who was an AQHA Reserve World Champion in the junior heeling, out of their mare that was related to Clay O’Brien Cooper’s Ike.

“We had actually sold that stud to Brazil,” Travis Kiehne said. “He went to Texas and got ready to go, but the rules changed and they had shut the borders down and he never left. So we bought him back. And then he wins the world with a Brazilian. Talk about full circle.”

The Kiehnes—who still ride and compete on the stud to this day—spent a lot of time on Timon outside as a colt, dragging calves and cowboying on him. But he sold to Arizona, where Brown found him tied to a fence while he and his wife were on their way to the Ariat World Series of Team Roping Finale in Las Vegas.

“He was in his work clothes, as I like to say,” Brown said. “He had a long coat, and he didn’t really have a finished look. But there was a lot of potential there, and he was cool-looking. He was green and hadn’t really been hauled, but I wanted to try him.”

Brown liked him so much he started jackpotting on him right away in Arizona, then he loaded him up and rode him in Las Vegas at the Finale.

Back East

“When I got back, I went to rodeoing on him, and I rode him at the First Frontier Circuit Finals that January, too,” Brown said. “I rode him everywhere. He was the total package: sweet, easy and athletic.”

But Brown broke his ankle, and he had another couple good ones coming on. Cory Petska had already bought a bay horse—who Petska renamed Lightning B—so Petska’s good friend Kaleb Driggers had heard of the East Coast rope horse trainer.

“Kaleb had seen him,” Brown said. “And he called and said they were looking for a horse for Junior, so I sent over some videos.”

“We were in Estes Park (Colorado) and Kaleb called me and said he saw this horse that looked pretty good and he’d been hauled a little bit,” Nogueira said. “He was pretty smooth, good color, long tail, he dragged a little bit. I like good color. When we buy younger horses, I want to buy things I like.”

At the time, Nogueira had three mounts: Green Card, Hali (aboard whom he won the 2020 AQHA’s senior heading world title) and Harry (who Travis Graves now owns). Hali was a little off, and Nogueira had left her home for the summer.

“We were doing good and we pretty much had the Finals made,” Nogueira said. “I just decided to buy him and not even try him. Kaleb set everything up, and I talked to Kenny Brown and I found a big old truck and sent him to Kaleb’s house. When I got home from Cheyenne, that was the first time I saw him.”

Timon was easy from the start, and both Driggers and Nogueira rode him as a backup horse at jackpots when they had a leg on their good horses.

By mid-summer 2019, Nogueira was hauling Timon alongside Hali and Green Card, and he hopped on him to win his first rodeo in Wolf Point, Montana. Later that summer, Nogueira got the win at the Spicer Gripp on him, and then he rode him at the 2019 NFR in Las Vegas. He placed in six rounds, including splitting the win in Round 8 and winning Rounds 9 and 10 outright.

“He’s turned into a really good horse. He does good pretty much everywhere,” Nogueira said. “But he’s not fun to practice on. It’s something kind of crazy about him. He always does something different. I just skip practicing on him and lope him. When you’re rodeoing, you don’t have to do nothing to him.”

Two years later, Timon ended up being the horse to get Nogueira the heeling gold buckle that he’d been dying for since he came to the U.S. in 2014.

“He was more solid and more calm than ever in Las Vegas this year,” Nogueira said. “His front feet are always moving. People think I am in a bad spot with my horses stopping, but he’ll take one more step forward and let me pull off shots. And that’s what Timon does so well.” TRJ

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